


a foot swift on the hills as morning

by laiqualaurelote



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: BAMF Sarah Williams (Labyrinth), Boss/Employee Relationship, Crossover, F/M, Magic, Multiple Crossovers, Mythology References, Running, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:24:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laiqualaurelote/pseuds/laiqualaurelote
Summary: “You’ve spent ten years running from me,” said Jareth. “Now, how would you like to run for me?”In which Sarah accidentally gets a job offer, acquires far too many interns and becomes a professional labyrinth runner.





	a foot swift on the hills as morning

**Author's Note:**

> The technical distinction between labyrinths and mazes is that a labyrinth is unicursal (non-branching) while a maze is multicursal (many branches). It's clear that the Labyrinth of the Underground is multicursal, however, and for the purposes of this fic, I use "labyrinth" and "maze" interchangeably.
> 
> The title is a line from the verse drama Atalanta In Calydon by A. C. Swinburne. In Greek myth, Atalanta was a maiden famed for her speed as a runner.

_I know that hidden in the shadows there_

_Lurks another, whose task is to exhaust_

_The loneliness that braids and weaves this hell_

_To crave my blood, and to fatten on my death._

_We seek each other. Oh, if only this_

_Were the last day of our antithesis!_

– Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Labyrinth’, translated by John Updike

The labyrinth below London Below stank. It was moist with centuries of buried misery, but beneath that was the primordial stench of the old terrors of the city.

Sarah stood on a broken parapet overlooking the ruined street, throwing stones.

Some of the stones clattered in the street. Others landed in the brackish water that curdled where the street gave way, sending up echoing splashes.

In the bowels of the labyrinth, she heard something stir.

Sarah kept throwing the stones with her right hand. In her left was one of the three crystals she had entered the labyrinth with; it was glowing, giving her enough light to see by. This had been her second wish. Her first had been that she should go unseen and unsensed by the Beast of London, which even now she could hear approaching, gathering speed.

Sarah slung the ball of light into the air and sent it drifting down the street. It was a broad Roman road, flanked on either side by the remains of buildings, Victorian and Jacobean and Restoration; she had picked it for this quality. She took out the third and last crystal and said: “I wish I had the sickle that the goblins made me in my hand now.”

Her fingers closed around the hilt of the weapon. The sickle was on the end of a chain and could be swung; the goblins had forged it from silver to her specifications and she had practised with it for weeks. Its edge was sharp enough to slice through any hide, even the hide of an ancient creature thickened by centuries of enmity. It was too small to do much damage, but one cut was all she needed.

Now came the Beast of London, churning up mud and paving stones beneath its hooves, its broad back bristling with broken spears like a forest of rusted iron heaving and rippling through the labyrinth. It came snorting and barrelling down the street towards the light.

Sarah began to spin the sickle on its chain in widening loops, picking up speed. She breathed in, the stench of the Beast clogging her nostrils as it flashed past in a heaving mass of flesh. She breathed out and let the sickle fly. 

The sickle sliced cleanly through its hide. The Beast roared but did not slow, no more than it would for the bite of a gadfly. But the force of it dragged Sarah off her feet and she tumbled off the parapet, hitting the street with a sickening crunch.

She blacked out for ten precious seconds from the pain. When she came to, she knew her arm had been dislocated at the shoulder. 

Sarah grit her teeth and forced her eyes open. The Beast had run on ahead, still chasing the floating light. The sickle was lying in the street just ahead of her. She began to drag herself towards it on one arm and saw with immense relief that it was still wet with the blood of the Beast.

She drew her fingertip through the wet blood and daubed it on her eyes and tongue.

The labyrinth blinked into focus around her. Suddenly she knew it, knew all of it like the beating pathways of her own heart.

One more thing left to sort out before she ran. She rucked up her shirt, tucked a wad of it between her teeth to bite down on and braced herself. Then she flung herself shoulder first into the nearest wall and felt the joint pop back into the socket with a stomach-turning burst of pain so horrible that it was all she could do to keep from retching.

She gave herself half a minute to recover. Then she said under her breath, “Come on, feet,” and she began to run.

The labyrinth below London Below was among the most treacherous of labyrinths, but the blood of the Beast led her true. She ran without light and in full agony, but she ran its twists and turns as if straight as an arrow flies. The labyrinth ended in a sheer cliff of granite, a pair of great double doors before her; these she flung open. She burst gasping into the heart of it even as the world swayed before her, and as her knees buckled, she flung out her good arm and cried: “ _I claim this labyrinth in the name of the Goblin King_!”

When she hit the ground, she was back in the throne room.

“Sarah,” she heard him say as if from a great distance, “Sarah, are you all right?”

“I demand a raise,” Sarah said, and passed out.

*

It had started with the running.

At first Sarah ran on weekends in the usual routes: Central Park, the High Line, along the Hudson. Two miles became four, became six. It wasn’t enough. She began running at night, in all defiance of common sense for a woman. 

There was no room to run freely in New York City, which was crowded and claustrophobic in its pathways. In a way, it reminded her of the Labyrinth. It had been ten years since she had thought of the Labyrinth, and she tried not to start now.

“You’re nuts,” said Laurie, her roommate, whose dedication to fitness did not extend past yoga class. “At that hour? Something could happen.”

“Maybe I’ll get so fast nobody’ll catch me,” retorted Sarah. “At least, that’s the idea.”

What was disturbing was the thought that the running was the only thing that made Manhattan bearable. Sarah had once dreamed of moving to Manhattan. Now that she was here, she chafed at its endless, tiny nastinesses, the ridiculous rents, the indignity of the subway on a summer afternoon, her terrible job in public relations. She drafted publicity campaigns for clients that never saw the light of day. She sent carefully crafted e-mails to media outlets and then called them to see if they’d received them, a practice that everyone involved resented deeply. She spoke brightly and earnestly about companies and people she knew deep down to be questionable. 

Things came to a head the night she had to stay back late to rewrite copy for one of their major clients, a fashion brand. Push the eco angle more, she’d been told. Sarah, who knew for a fact that the company burned millions of dollars’ worth of unsold stock a year, seethed past 10pm at her computer terminal, whereupon she said out loud through gritted teeth: “I wish there was more to my life than this.”

Almost immediately she knew it had been a mistake. The air sharpened till it glittered. Sarah caught her breath. 

“Careless of you, sweet Sarah,” said the Goblin King. He was sitting a cubicle over in full, gleaming armour, straddling the desk of Stuart from Marketing, his feathered cloak draped over intrays and outtrays. Same cut-glass cheekbones, same ridiculous hair. “So many ways I could play with a wish like that.”

Sarah’s throat was dry. “You have no power over me, Jareth.”

“No?” Jareth picked through Stuart’s stationery with curiosity. He selected a stapler and clicked a spray of staples into the air. “You said your right words. And don’t say you didn’t mean them, precious thing.” He gestured at the office, at the handful of her co-workers pulling overtime, oblivious to his presence. “How could you not want more than this?”

Sarah sighed and folded her arms. “Tell me what you propose, Goblin King.”

“You didn’t seem to like it when I proposed, last I checked.” Jareth slid smoothly off the desk and prowled over to her. He planted his hands on her desk, leaning over her. Sarah stared at those long, slender fingers in their leather gloves. She had spent ten years trying not to think about them. That she rarely succeeded, especially in her dreams, was something he did not need to know.

Jareth smirked at her as if he did indeed know. “No, sweet Sarah; this is a proposal of another ilk. A business proposal.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’ve spent ten years running from me,” he said. “Now, how would you like to run _for_ me?”

*

Laurie came out of her room to Sarah standing in the kitchen with a cold lasagna opened in her hand, staring into the microwave as if it was the Nietzschean abyss.

“Long day at work?” she ventured.

“Laurie,” said Sarah in a strange voice, “you work in HR. What would you do if someone from your past offered to hire you?”

“Don’t take job offers from your ex,” said Laurie prosaically.

“Not an ex,” said Sarah slowly. “Not...per se.”

“Even worse then. Unresolved sexual tension? Bad workplace dynamic. Deeply unproductive. Do not recommend.”

Sarah began to cry. Laurie, alarmed, took the lasagna away from her and rubbed her shaking shoulders.

“I hate my job,” managed Sarah between sobs. “I hate it so much. Of course he’d know to use that.”

“Oh, honey. Don’t agree to anything you aren’t a hundred per cent sure about.”

“Oh believe you me,” said Sarah with surprising vehemence, “I am not doing _that_ again.”

*

In the end, Sarah drew up the hiring contract herself. She based it on templates Laurie had supplied, though she refused to let Laurie review it. She puzzled over every clause and loophole. 

It was clear that while Jareth was great at bargains, he was not too bothered about the nitty-gritty of employment. Sarah named him a starting pay ten times what she was earning at her current job and he waved her on, already bored. 

He skimmed through the pages on health benefits, period of notice and leave days - stopping only to raise an eyebrow at “The undersigned will have free access in and out of the Underground at any time without prejudice or obligation”. 

“You know that goes both ways,” he pointed out. “If you have access to my domain, I have the same access to yours.”

Sarah considered this. Her domain was at present half of a shabby walk-up apartment in Midtown. “For as long as we are both bound by the contract, no longer,” she said. 

Jareth signed with a flourish in the space provided, a tangled curl of ink that could not be read.

“Now,” he said, grinning, “you are mine.”

Sarah folded her arms. “If you say so, boss.”

Jareth threw back his head and let out an uncanny peal of laughter.

*

He had her run the easy labyrinths first. There was the round labyrinth with the mysterious black, red and white figures hanging around in it; they did not interfere, only watched her pass with indifference and sometimes stood on their heads. There was the labyrinth of spiralling canals that were traversed in boats like shells, powered by foot pedals from the back. There was the labyrinth in the small, sad city where everywhere she went, men with the same crazed look in their eyes were blocking off entrances and exits with rubble. There was a woman in their dreams with long black hair, they said, who fled from them through the gaps in the city; they were plugging these so they would not lose her the next time. They eyed Sarah with an unsettling hunger. She was glad to solve that one.

“Are they all going to be so simple?” she remarked one day. 

Jareth was sprawled lengthwise on his throne, tossing one of his crystals up and down. At her words, he snatched it out of the air and swung round to face her. “Simple, is it?”

The sneer on his face reminded her of that moment when she had called his Labyrinth a “piece of cake”, but she raised her chin anyway and said, “Yes. Simple.”

“Well now,” said Jareth. “Can’t have our Sarah being condescended to, can we?”

He flung the crystal at the wall behind her head. It opened up a vortex. “Run along then,” he said, and there was an unpleasant edge to his tone.

Sarah rolled her eyes and stepped into the vortex.

She stepped out into fresh snow. The hedge walls of the maze rose dark and forbidding around her, coated in white, lit by small floodlights tucked under the hedges.

There were footsteps in the snow.

Sarah shut her eyes and listened to the maze. To the creak of the hedges in the winter wind. To the whisper of falling snow. To the heavy, crazed breathing of the man standing behind the hedge next to her. “Danny,” he was mumbling, “Danny, I’m coming for you - ” and then he was screaming, “ _I’m coming for you! I’m coming for you!_ ”

Sarah’s eyes snapped open and she began to run.

*

“You dropped me in a maze with an axe murderer,” she hissed later.

“As mazes go it was an easy one,” Jareth responded. “A five-year-old could have solved it. And I can only presume the axe murderer was not very fast, for here you are without a scratch.”

_It’s not fair_ , Sarah wanted to say – but it was, wasn’t it, she had said the mazes were too simple and he had given her a harder one, and they were only going to get harder from here on in because this was now her job and fairness didn’t enter into it. So instead she put all her fear and rage into a short, wordless scream and then she turned and left the throne room. 

*

“You can stop any time, you know.”

Sarah jerked awake. Jareth was sitting at the foot of her bed. In his cape and feathers, he seemed far too big for the room, which was probably the case, since all Sarah could afford in Midtown was the size of a closet.

“Urgh.” She buried her face in the pillow. “Go away.”

“The compact allows for it,” Jareth went on, as if he had not heard. “You may...’give notice’...whensoever you feel the work is too much for you.”

“It’s too early for this,” groused Sarah. “I wish you’d go make me a cup of coffee.”

Silence. Sarah raised her head. She was alone in her room.

There was a shriek outside. Sarah scrambled out of bed and dashed into the kitchen. Laurie was staring, flabbergasted, as the Goblin King inspected their fridge.

“Who the fuck are you!” Laurie shouted. “What the fuck are you doing in my flat?”

“Fret not, Laurelei Chen,” said Jareth, ragged blond head still in the fridge. “You have naught to fear from me, unless you cross me or mine.”

“Your real name is Laurelei?” said Sarah. 

Laurie, who had turned a bright beet shade, seemed lost for words.

“That milk’s gone off,” Sarah told Jareth as he emerged with a bottle of milk in hand.

Jareth removed the cap, ran a fingertip around the rim and licked his finger. “Not any more, it hasn’t.” He cast his gaze around the flat, taking in the cramped living room that was also the kitchen, the droppings-encrusted fire escape, the mysterious mould in the corner of the ceiling. “I offered you my kingdom and all the bounty of my domain,” he said reproachfully to Sarah, “and you settle for this.”

“It’s shitty,” said Sarah, “but it’s mine.” 

“No, it’s not,” said Jareth loftily, “you pay somebody else money to live in it. Don’t fool yourself, my girl.” He poured some of the milk into a mug, blew on it and handed it to her. Then he walked back into her room with the rest of the milk.

“That’s your boss?” mouthed Laurie.

The mug was filled with coffee - cream and half a spoon of sugar, the way Sarah always took it. She stuck her head into the bedroom. Jareth had vanished. On the sill of the open window sat an empty milk bottle. 

“Yeah,” she said to Laurie. “That’s Jareth. Sorry about that.”

“I mean,” said Laurie. “Those tights.”

“I know.” Sarah took a sip of coffee. It was so good her eyes rolled back into her head and she groaned involuntarily. 

“I just - ” began Laurie. “Never mind.” She went back into her room.

*

“Sir Didymus?”

“Yes, milady?”

“Can you teach me how to use a sword?”

*

She settled into a routine. Mornings, she got up at seven, ate breakfast with Laurie in their cramped kitchenette. Laurie took the subway to work; Sarah went through the mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door.

She went running around the outskirts of the Labyrinth. She ran up and down the stairs in the Escher room, because nothing tested one’s endurance like flights of stairs that went nowhere.

She sparred with Sir Didymus, who could be very exacting about her sword drills when he wanted to, and practised marksmanship with Hoggle, who thought the whole thing was a terrible idea and grumbled accordingly, especially when she refused to shoot the fairies. She made Ludo hurl rocks at her so she could duck them. Ludo did not want to. “Then somebody else will do it and they’ll really mean to kill me, and they’ll succeed because you didn’t help me get in the practice,” she said sternly. Ludo wept at that, great tears rolling down his furry face and collecting on his tusks, but he acquiesced. 

She read weaponry manuals. Some of these, the library in the Castle had in abundance; for the more modern weapons, she had to go to the New York Public Library and dig up old copies of Guns & Ammo. In the Castle's armoury, she hefted spears and swords and maces and glaives as their smiths grumbled and bustled around her, took apart firing mechanisms, peered into the mouths of cannons.

She was in the orchard doing chin-ups from a tree branch - the trees knew her routine by now and jostled to put out the best branches for her favour - when she felt Jareth watching her. She ignored him and focussed on the workout, muscles screaming as she hauled herself up. When she reached twenty, she dropped to the ground and only then did she turn to look at him. 

Jareth was leaning against a tree, arms crossed, gaze raking over her. Sarah, conscious of her sweat-stained tank top and dust-topped track shoes, made herself meet his eyes.

He looked - appreciative. As much as he had been when she’d been in a glittering white ball gown. She picked up her water bottle to take a swig from; the movement made the muscles in her arms flex involuntarily, and she felt his eyes move to them.

Sarah took her time with the water. Finally she wiped her mouth in an unladylike fashion - Irene would have conniptions if she saw - and said, “What’s up?”

“Ready to run again?” Jareth inquired.

“Sure. I’ll run tomorrow.” And then, because she couldn’t resist: “How risky will it be?”

Jareth’s mouth crooked. “As much risk as your restless heart requires.”

*

This maze kept changing. Not imperceptibly, like the Labyrinth, but with horrible ground-crunching force. The walls slid together and apart, reshuffling like a deck of cards. Sarah flung herself through a gap that closed almost on her heel and sprinted down a narrowing passage. She turned a corner and saw the spider.

It was huger than she was – part spider, part scorpion, part metal nightmare. It reared back on its hind legs, gnashing, then ran up a wall and at her. 

“I wish I had a sword,” said Sarah out loud, palmed a crystal from the pouch at her waist and threw it into the air, visualising the sword as she did. 

Now Jareth gave her three crystals for each labyrinth she ran. She could not wish to solve the labyrinth or destroy it - either would forfeit the run, according to the unwritten but unshakeable rules of labyrinths everywhere - but she could wish for a tool, a weapon, or a change in circumstance. Now she caught the sword by its hilt as it came down, wheeled and sliced through the creature’s foreleg as it reached for her. 

The thing shrieked, unearthly and metallic. Sarah crouched and saw the leg, dismembered, was steel and wiring beneath sickly, dripping goo. As its tail came darting at her, stinger dripping with venom, she sliced that off too. Ducking beneath its clacking legs, she plunged the sword into its snarling face and gutted it mouth to abdomen. 

She was sawing into its core when she glanced up and saw two boys staring at her, carrying an unconscious third between them.

“Hi,” said Sarah brightly. “Do you know your way around here?”

*

“This is incredible,” said Sarah, staring at the model.

“It’s based on what we know of the maze, those who’ve run it,” said Minho. Come morning, he and Thomas, the other boy Sarah had met in the maze, had brought her back to a clearing they called the Glade. There was a whole crowd of boys living there in ramshackle tents, some in their late teens, some barely older than Toby, and they all froze as she walked in. Some dropped their tools. Sarah was fairly sure she saw one set himself on fire. 

Now they were having an argument about her outside, which Sarah, Minho and Thomas were trying to ignore. “She killed a Griever! She broke the rules! We should send her back out.” 

“No one’s sending anyone anywhere without a trial - ”

“And when they punish us? Take more boys? What then?”

“Minho saw her use magic!”

“Magic, Newt? Just listen to yourself.”

“Gally, we’re trapped in an ever-changing maze of monsters with no memories of how and why. I think magic isn’t that far of a stretch.”

“Okay,” said Sarah over the racket, plonking the core she had extracted from the Griever on the table, “I’m getting out of here. You’re welcome to come along, if you like.”

“Where to?” asked Thomas suspiciously. “Your kingdom?”

“The kingdom of the guy I work for.”

“Is it safe?”

“Depends on how you feel about bogs and sudden musical numbers.” Sarah pointed at a digit blinking on the display of the core. “What’s that?”

“Hang on.” Minho was circling the maze model; now he took the core from her and held it over a section. “The maze is divided into sections; they rotate, always in the same order. Last night, we were in section seven. The Griever’s from this section. There’s a hole in this section I never could work out how to get through, but there’s got to be a way the Grievers come in and out of the maze; maybe this here is how.”

“Could you get us through the maze to this hole?” Sarah asked. “We need to do it soon.”

“I’ve run this maze for three years, lady. I can get you anywhere in it.” Minho withdrew the core. “But I’m not going without Alby.”

Alby was the name of the third boy, once their leader, now unconscious in the medical hut. 

Sarah took a deep breath and considered things. She had two crystals left. She might need both of them to get out of here. But she also needed Minho, and Minho wouldn’t leave without his friend. Sarah didn’t think she would either, in his situation.

She took the second crystal out of her pouch. “Let’s see what I can do about Alby.”

*

“I stole you all these children,” said Sarah. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

Jareth narrowed his eyes at the ragtag bunch of boys clutching spears in his throne room. They were still covered in Griever goo - there had been a close fight at the end to cut through the creatures and get to the hole, and Sarah had used her last wish on a grenade. Not all of the boys had wanted to come - some, like Gally, had argued for staying behind in the Glade - but her display of magic in healing Alby had persuaded many of them, and Alby, once conscious, had talked the rest into following her into the maze.

“They’re a bit old for my taste,” concluded Jareth.

“You should have seen where I found them. They’d have wished themselves away if they’d known how.”

“We seek refuge,” Alby spoke up. “We have no memories except for our time imprisoned in the maze. We wish to join your kingdom and have your protection.”

Jareth sighed. “You,” he said, pointing his cane at Minho. “You can run?”

“Yes, sir,” ventured Minho. “Sire, I mean. Your Majesty. Sorry.”

“I suppose they can be trained up for something useful,” Jareth decided. “Do you all bend the knee to my rule and swear to serve and obey me - ”

“Within reason and never to harm yourselves or others, as long as you have his protection,” supplemented Sarah.

Jareth glared. “I won’t have you taking advantage,” Sarah told him.

“Within reason and never to harm yourselves or others, as long as you have my protection,” amended Jareth. “For I am the height of generosity.”

The boys glanced nervously at each other. “I swear,” said Alby, and the others murmured assent after him.

Jareth snapped his fingers at a goblin perched in a corniche by his head. “You, Grobble - ”

“Grundle, Your Majesty.”

“ - yes, that - find these boys quarters in the city. See they have what they need. They can set about earning their keep on the morrow.”

“Someone will be along for them,” he added to Sarah as Grundle escorted the boys out. 

“I suppose you’ll have to let whoever it is run the Labyrinth to get them back.”

“Of course,” said Jareth virtuously. “You know me. I’m always fair.”

Sarah snorted.

*

Someone did come for the boys. They attempted to bomb the Labyrinth from the air.

“Not very sporting,” remarked Jareth as the Labyrinth simply winked out of sight for the bombers. “I declare the challenge forfeit.”

The goblins cackled and hooted. Jareth, pleased with himself, burst into song.

“But where is the music coming from?” whispered Thomas, wide-eyed.

“Just go with it,” Sarah whispered back. “You get used to it eventually.”

*

Part of Sarah’s training regime now involved climbing out of the oubliette. She had forbidden the Helping Hands from helping her. “Oh, keep still, you lot! I’ve got to do this on my own.”

The Hands grumbled, but stopped grabbing at her. Muscles aching, she climbed on upwards until she crawled, exhausted, into one of the Labyrinth’s courtyards and lay baking in the sun, trying to catch her breath.

The boys were doing laps in the outer circuit of the Labyrinth; she heard the occasional yell as one of them tumbled through a trapdoor. She trotted back to the Castle, the Labyrinth cleaving to her so that it was but a ten-minute walk, and was halfway up the steps to the throne room, swigging from her water bottle, when she heard voices raised.

“...and don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” she heard a woman snap. “Of all the underhanded ways to steal power - ”

“Nothing underhanded about it, Mor,” she heard Jareth reply. “She beat your labyrinth fair and square.”

Sarah came to the top of the steps and saw the visitor. She was a tall woman of an extraordinary wild beauty and an Irish brogue. As she turned to Sarah, her face shifted as if it was glitching - for a split second she was blue-haired and beaked like a crow, then red-haired, her face shrunken like a death’s-head. “So this is your little runner,” she sneered.

“Sarah,” said Jareth, sounding bored, “this is the Morrigan.”

The Morrigan looked Sarah up and down and stepped into her space, her face glitching furiously. Sarah felt her nearness like a storm prickling her skin. She raised her chin and met the Morrigan’s flaying glare.

They held each other’s gazes for a beat. Then the Morrigan stepped away. 

“You’re an ignoble savage, Goblin King,” she spat at Jareth, “and you’ve not heard the end of this.”

“Send your own champion,” said Jareth dismissively. “Have them run my labyrinth. But remember, it grows stronger every day.”

The Morrigan turned on her heel in a flare of robes and strode from the throne room, vanishing before she reached the door.

“This must be the first time I’ve seen you defy some other authority besides mine,” remarked Jareth. “It’s wildly diverting. I should arrange for it to happen more often.”

“Which was her labyrinth, again?”

“Do you recall the dead maze with the dank walls?”

“Yes.” Sarah shuddered. “Covered in those awful, quivering growths.”

“Those were beads of the Morrigan’s sweat. The maze is her thumbprint.”

“Oh.” Sarah contemplated this. “Gross. So what is it exactly that you're doing with the labyrinths?”

“A labyrinth is a funny thing.” Jareth produced a crystal and began spinning it on a finger. “Most see them as a way to keep people out - certainly I did, until you showed me different.”

“A labyrinth is a way in,” said Sarah, understanding dawning. “If you solve it right.”

“Take the Morrigan, for instance. When you claimed her maze in my name, you opened it to me. I may pass freely through her kingdom and draw on its power. She may not raise her hand against me.”

“I ran your labyrinth and won,” said Sarah. “Does that mean you cannot raise your hand against me?”

“I would not raise my hand against you,” said Jareth. “But not for that reason.”

He had an odd look in his piercing, mismatched eyes. Sarah glanced away. 

“I should go to check on how the boys are doing,” she said, her voice too loud for her own ears. “If I don’t, Sir Didymus is likely to run them into the ground.”

Jareth watched her go, saying nothing.

*

“You look like you’ve been working out, Sarah,” remarked her stepmother when she made it back home for Thanksgiving dinner.

“Yeah,” said Sarah. “A bit.”

“It’s a good look,” said Irene, passing her the potatoes. “You used to be so waif-like. No flesh on those bones.”

“Don’t overdo it though, sweetheart,” put in her father, “men don’t like too much muscle on a girl.”

“I don’t think I’m much interested in a man who feels threatened by a woman who can bench press her own body weight,” said Sarah calmly, and popped a potato into her mouth.

Her father stared at her. “You can bench press your own weight?” Toby exclaimed. “Cool! Can you lift me with one arm?”

“Maybe,” said Sarah. “Want to try?”

“Let Sarah finish her dinner first, darling,” said Irene hastily as Toby whooped. “So how’s work going?”

“It’s fine. Actually I switched roles a while back. It’s a much better fit for me.”

“What area is that in?” asked her father.

“Acquisitions,” said Sarah.

“Hm. It’s not a start-up, is it?” Her father was suspicious of start-ups.

“No, it’s a well-established firm. It’s just that they’re moving in a new direction, so they brought me on.”

“That’s nice, dear. Big headcount?”

“We’re pretty manpower-lean,” said Sarah. “But I did get a whole bunch of interns recently.”

*

“Are you and Jareth together?” Minho wanted to know.

“Seriously, guys, I didn’t save you from the Glade so you could ask me intrusive questions.” Sarah cocked a hand on a hip. “How’s your training going?”

“Pretty good,” said Minho. “Thomas cleared the Moving Maze the other day.” Parts of the other labyrinths Sarah had run were beginning to manifest in the Underground, and after some initial wariness, the boys had started to attempt the moving section that had come over from their previous prison. 

“That’s great, Thomas.” 

“Thanks,” said Thomas. “So are you and Jareth together?”

“No,” said Sarah, and did not add, not for lack of Jareth trying. “And I hope you don’t go around asking him this sort of thing.”

“We don’t need to,” said Newt. “He’s bloody into you. Don’t that make you like, Queen or something?”

Sarah felt a headache coming on. Nowhere in her job description had there been a mention of raising a bunch of mind-wiped, traumatised teenage boys with her employer, whom they believed her to be in a relationship with. What did they even know about relationships, anyway? Had anyone given them the sex talk? Perhaps she could foist that one off on Jareth. Probably to disastrous effect.

“No more of that,” she said to their grinning faces. “Or I’ll set Sir Didymus on you for extra drills.” And, ignoring their groans, “Now I’ve brought you new books to read. I hope you’ve finished the last batch.”

*

What was it about mazes and giant spiders anyway, Sarah thought in annoyance as the latest specimen bore down on her with its pincers clacking, the size of a carthorse. She tossed a crystal at it and shouted: “I wish this spider would freeze at once!” 

The spider toppled over in paralysis. Sarah edged past it and broke into a run as the centre of the maze came into sight.

So far she had walked through a golden mist that turned things upside down and encountered what looked like a giant cross between a scorpion and a crab that shot sparks out of one end, on which she’d used her first crystal. Just another day on the job, then.

In the centre of the maze was a pedestal, and on it sat a shining cup. “I claim this labyrinth in th - ” began Sarah, taking hold of it, and her voice died as something unpleasant yanked under her navel and she fell through space into a dark graveyard.

Tombstones loomed around her, many broken and crumbling on their side. There was a man standing before her, a short, little man - and to his side, something, _someone_ else that she had no name for. Her mouth went dry. 

“Hang on,” said the man, “that’s not the right - ” 

And a smooth, cold voice said: “ _Kill the spare._ ”

The man pointed a stick at her. “ _Avada kedavra_.”

Sarah, without even time to think, was already throwing her last crystal at him. As it met the jet of green light, as the ensuing explosion flooded the graveyard in a blinding wave of light, as she dropped to the ground and her hand groped for the cup -

\- _I wish to live, I wish to live, I wish to live_ -

“ - in the name of the Goblin King,” said her lips, as she hurtled again through the dark.

When she collapsed in the throne room, she was sobbing for reasons she could not find words for.

Jareth was angrier than she had ever seen him. “That labyrinth was _rigged_ ,” he hissed. “It should not have done that. It’s not - ”

“ - not fair?” Sarah cut him off. She had now reached the stage where she was laugh-crying, hysterical, at the same time. “That’s my line, you know.”

Jareth took her face between his long fingers. “That was a killing curse, Sarah,” he said sombrely. “You could have died.”

“Oh,” said Sarah. “Oh.” Her body had known this, even if her mind hadn’t caught up till now; that must be why it was behaving in such a bizarre fashion. There were plenty of times she could have died in the last dozen labyrinths, the rational part of her mind reasoned, but somehow the thought was only occurring to her now. Her mind was full of green light. _Avada kedavra_. She hiccoughed on a sob. 

“Take me home, Jareth,” she whispered. “Please.”

In her tiny room in the noisy Manhattan night, she curled up wordlessly on top of the bedclothes. Jareth watched her in silence, and then he sat down at the foot of her bed and began to take her boots off. Neither of them remarked on how odd that was. When he was done, he rose again.

“I do not regret most of the wishes I grant,” he said, gazing down at her, “but I think I am beginning to regret this one.”

Sarah blinked back at him, sleep lapping at her, and in between blinks he was gone.

He said nothing when she reported for work the next day, and she said nothing. A month later, she ran the labyrinth of London Below.

*

She woke to the darkness of her bedroom and the dull but insistent throbbing of her shoulder.

Jareth was sitting by her bed in a chair he had definitely conjured, since she didn’t have chairs in her bedroom. His right hand was working a sort of cat’s cradle with a gleaming thread, which gave off a light that limned his jawline in silver. In his left, he was reading a sheaf of papers.

“Is that my contract?” asked Sarah blearily. Her system was still weighed down with the drugs that the goblin physicians had pumped her full of.

“Yes,” said Jareth shortly.

Sarah squinted at the page he was reading. Termination clause. “Are you trying to fire me?”

“Yes,” repeated Jareth, adding: “Though I have yet to work out how.”

Sarah shut her eyes in exhausted triumph. “You can’t fire me without valid grounds. Like failure to deliver. And I’ve delivered over and over. I delivered you London Below.”

“You could have broken more than your arm,” Jareth shot back. “That was not in the plan.”

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

“Be as that may.” Jareth made the contract vanish into thin air and turned to stare grimly at her. “It seems the only way to keep you by my side is to continue providing you with opportunities to exercise your deathwish.”

“It’s not - ugh. I don’t _want_ to die. It’s just - have you ever found something you are good at? More than anything else in the world?”

“Stealing children, dark magic, accessorising,” intoned Jareth. “I’m good at lots of things.”

“Well, I’m good at labyrinths,” said Sarah. “It’s rare, in my world, to both find something you’re good at _and_ be able to make a living out of it. Don’t try to take that away from me.”

Jareth sighed and handed her the cat’s cradle, which by now had expanded into a kind of broad ribbon. “Slap that on.” He jerked his chin at her shoulder. “And don’t even think of getting out of bed for a week.” He stuck his head out and yelled into the darkened flat: “See that she stays in bed, Laurelei!”

“It’s three a.m., what the fuck?” Laurie yelled back.

Sarah fumbled the gleaming ribbon onto her shoulder; it curled around it like a bandage and sank into her skin. The dull throbbing was replaced by a cooling sensation that numbed the whole joint.

Jareth returned to her bedside and stood looking down at her critically. “I will have you know, Sarah,” he said gravely, “that I prize you more than I prize all the labyrinths of the world.”

Sarah fought back a giggle. It must be the drugs. “That’s nice. Do I get that raise, then?”

“You can have all the riches of the Underground, dear heart, if you will stop falling off things,” said Jareth wearily, and then in a flare of his cloak, he was gone.

*

Magic healing or no, Sarah was benched for a month. She passed the time in interminable rounds of Scrabble with Didymus, going jogging whenever Jareth wasn’t paying attention and the Labyrinth’s first-ever staff retreat.

“Oh my god,” she exclaimed, emerging from a hedge maze into the bustle of an amusement park. “Is this Disneyland? When did we add Disneyland?”

“I may have had Minho run the labyrinth here while you were on sick leave,” admitted Jareth.

“It was shucking easy,” put in Minho, wandering by with a soft-serve in hand. “Did it in less than ten.”

“Because it’s for babies, you slinthead,” Gally called, and ducked as Minho lunged for him.

“Behave, you lot,” Sarah shouted after them. “No fighting, no jumping off the rides and be back here by sundown.”

“For a girl who wished away her brother rather than mind him, you’ve got rather good with children,” remarked Jareth.

“Oh shut up,” said Sarah without heat. He offered her his arm; she took it with her good hand, the one not in the sling, and they strolled through the park after their fifty teenagers running amok.

“I suppose it’s about time they saw the world outside of mazes,” she mused. “Even if Disneyland is hardly representative.”

“It has its relevant aspects.” Jareth was watching a couple of girls giggle and whisper in French as they watched Thomas and Chuck debate, with furrowed concentration, the merits of Hyperspace Mountain versus Big Thunder Mountain Road. Thomas glimpsed the girls looking and blushed horribly.

“We’re introducing them to girls now? Really?”

“They’re of an age for it,” said Jareth remorselessly. “It’s either that or have them moon about the Labyrinth in love with you. Or each other.” Newt was watching Thomas begin a fumbling conversation with the girls, a sour look on his face. 

“Oh dear,” said Sarah.

“Adolescence,” said Jareth. “Delightful.”

*

Things settled into a routine once she was back in the field. She trained, ran more labyrinths, debriefed Jareth afterwards. She called these “after-action reports”, but really they meant lounging around in his quarters, drinking whatever strange vintage he had at hand and recounting her latest conquest while he listened with lidded gaze as the fire in the grate burned low.

“ - and then I realised the whole city was the labyrinth, so I figured it out from there. I rather liked this one, you know. It had a real atmosphere to it. Even though it was dark all the time and I couldn’t let myself sleep and there were all these psychopathic aliens in trenchcoats.”

“They were aliens, then? That explains a lot.”

“Oh, yeah, aliens. They were wearing the bodies of dead people.”

“Cunning.”

“Stil, it was pretty cool. I pretended to be a singer in a nightclub at one point.”

“You’ll sing for the aliens, but not for me?”

She laughed. “Maybe someday.”

*

Sarah put the book back on the shelf, and then she said, “Goodbye,” under her breath, turned and walked out of the library. 

The shelves parted for her and she came out into the Escher room. Navigating the Escher room was always less about directions and more about a state of mind, so she merely told it she wanted to see Jareth, went down a couple of flights and turned into the corridor leading to the throne room. She could hear Jareth in discussion with somebody - Newt, it turned out.

“ - and we were just thinking it’s a pretty inefficient way to water the gardens,” Newt was saying. “But if we were to rejig the irrigation systems like so, Zart thinks that we could do twice the work with half the water.”

“You are aware,” came Jareth’s voice, “that the wellspring is infinite and so it hardly matters how much water you use.”

“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing,” Newt went on. “Just because you think something is going to last forever doesn’t mean you should waste it.”

“Hm. Then see it done, Newton.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. Oh, and if there’s a decree or something you could put it to let the gardeners know you’ve approved this? Only they keep messing with our work, and one of them even shoots at us with his air-gun-thing.”

“That creature no longer listens to me, only to Sarah. You can take it up with her - if she ever comes back.”

There was a bitterness to Jareth’s tone that she’d rarely heard. Sarah stepped into the throne room. “You needn’t worry about Hoggle, Newt, I’ll have a word with him.”

Jareth, restlessly moving crystals from hand to hand, stilled on his throne. “Sarah!” exclaimed Newt. “How did the - ” He paused and glanced cautiously at Jareth.

“Leave us,” said Jareth.

Newt gathered up his diagrams and slipped out of the room.

Sarah paused to take stock. Jareth was livid; it was obvious when he was, his rage made the air around him freeze and sting. It had been a long time, though, since she had been the subject of such rage. She edged forward carefully. “Did - did something happen while I was away?”

Jareth laughed, a hollow, mocking sound. “While you were _away_ , Sarah?”

“Look, I’m sorry, but that labyrinth cannot be solved.”

“After all that time - ” began Jareth, then caught himself. “No, it doesn’t matter.”

“Wait,” said Sarah. “How long did I take?”

Jareth turned slowly to look at her. “You didn’t know.”

“Time is funny in the library.” Sarah stepped closer to the throne. “Jareth, how long did I take?”

“A month,” he said heavily. “You were in the labyrinth for a month.”

“Oh.”

It hadn’t felt like a month. The library, in the early days, had felt like madness, as she wandered through its hexagonal rooms and took book after book of gibberish off its shelves. Eventually it fell not into a pattern but into a rhythm. There were always the bare necessities for survival in every room. Sometimes she met others in the library - some burnt the books in despair of ever finding anything of sense, while others told her they were searching for a messianic figure with the index to everything printed in the library. She moved from room to room, ate, drank and slept when she needed to, read book after book after book. And then one day, she decided to leave.

“You missed me,” she said, realisation dawning.

In three strides Jareth was off the throne and in front of her; she thought he might seize her, but instead he stilled and raised her chin with the tip of a finger. “Do not belittle me, Sarah.”

Sarah caught his wrist and his eyes flashed. “Don’t be so swift to anger, Goblin King,” she said. “Come and see.”

They had never gone together to see any of the other labyrinths before, but now he let her lead him out of the throne room and into the infinite library. 

“I thought you said you couldn’t solve this one,” said Jareth as they wandered through the hexagonal rooms.

Sarah pressed her finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s a library.”

Jareth looked remarkably unchastened.

“Nobody can solve it,” she went on quietly. “It’s infinite.” She removed something from her pocket - it was like one of his crystals, except with endless strings of characters scrolling over its surface. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t get around it.”

She lifted the sphere to her lips and spoke: “Title equals open inverted commas the labyrinth closed inverted commas and open inverted commas through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered comma I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city to take back the child you have stolen closed inverted commas search.”

The room shivered around them, dissolved and re-formed.

“So I had three crystals,” went on Sarah by way of explanation. “The first I used to get an algorithm - do you have those? Dead useful - for searching through infinite amounts of data. The second spell is still a bit iffy: it scans for redundancy based on my own memory of the English corpus, what should work and what shouldn’t, though because it’s just my memory at the moment, it’s rather prone to error. The third is a teleportation charm. It takes the user to the location of the most relevant result and - ” here she paused to scan the shelves, ran her finger down a row of spines and yanked out one. It was the red leatherbound edition of The Labyrinth. “Ta-da.”

Jareth took it from her, opened it and read in silence. After a while he turned it face-up to her and said: “Half of it is empty.”

She laughed. “That’d be the second spell. I did say it was iffy.”

“Sarah, precious one,” said Jareth, almost as if in wonderment, “did you really spend a month locked away in a library so infinite as to be meaningless, just so you could build a search engine that has about as much chance of working as my subjects learning to fly?”

“Yep. That’s what you pay me for.”

“That is not - ” began Jareth, and trailed off as she took the book from him and their fingers brushed.

He took a step forward, and then another, until she had her back pressed against the shelves. 

“Why did you bring me here, Sarah?”

“I don’t know.” Her ribs felt inexplicably like something was about to burst through them. “I like libraries, I guess.”

“So do I,” he said, and leaned in.

Jareth kissed with tongue and teeth, and her whole body thrilled to it. The book dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers, landing with a soft thump on the carpeted floor. Her hand, freed, tangled on its own instincts in his shock of hair. His slid along her thigh and hitched it up against his hip, pressing her further back into the shelves. For ten years she had imagined something like this, and yet nothing could have prepared her for this moment.

His fingers skimmed her ribs and crept below the waistband of her jeans. She laid a hand flat against his abdomen and he stilled, but she did not push him away and he slipped a finger into her and she arched against the spines of the books.

She was making all kinds of sounds she didn’t think she could make. Jareth placed his free hand on her mouth, saying in mock horror, “This is a library, Sarah,” and in response she set her teeth in his glove and he groaned.

Her spine felt like it was melting at the base. He was singing a litany of her name in her ear. “Oh, Sarah Williams, I will take you apart,” he crooned, and she came trembling, back pressed against the shelves of an infinite library with the Goblin King knuckle-deep in her.

*

They didn’t get out of bed for days.

Jareth seemed endlessly fascinated with the changes she had wrought in her body over the past year. He traced the muscles of her arms, kissed the hard planes of her stomach, ran his hands along the leanness of her legs before hooking them over his shoulders to drive deeper into her. Sarah discovered she liked hair-pulling. Jareth had plenty of hair.

He fucked her on her back as she braced herself against the headboard, and then she flipped him over - he seemed to delight in that, the strength of her thighs - and rode him with his wrists pinned above his head in one hand. In between they ate the food that magically appeared on the bedside table - she could not remember any of it, it could have been pizza for all she knew - and then fucked some more. The room changed as they did, sometimes stretching upwards so her cries echoed around the rafters, sometimes filling with mirrors. Sarah almost did not recognise herself in these, her hair a wild tangle and something wilder in her eyes, a king on his knees between her legs, her hands fisted in his ash blond hair.

Somewhere on the third day, they were taking a break, Sarah testing the myriad sorenesses of her body and Jareth stretched languorously out next to her, toying with one of her hands. “Marry me,” he said suddenly.

Sarah sat up and stared at him. “Oh, Jareth, not this again.”

“I do not ask this lightly, Sarah. Certainly I do not make such offers to every brash stripling of a girl to run my labyrinth. I have never met anyone like you and you will never meet anyone like me. We understand one another perfectly. It is utterly sensible.”

“Oh god.” Sarah made to slide out of bed. “This was a bad idea after all.”

Jareth rose and stood silhouetted, magnificent, against the light from the window. “I will not keep lowering myself to ask this, Sarah. I will not beg.”

“And I will not be bound,” she returned hotly. “If you understand me perfectly, you must know that.”

She seized a robe from the floor and stalked out, throwing it around her shoulders. He watched her go with a cold fury in his eyes.

She walked and walked until she realised she was no longer in the castle but in one of the labyrinths, and not one she had ever run. Dark corridors, flickering torches on reddish granite walls. A rank animal stench.

On the ground was a ball of thread.

She picked up the ball and knotted one end to a bracket on the wall. Then she began to walk.

The corridor seemed straight at first, but she soon realised that it was curving, just slightly enough to fool the eye. The animal stench grew stronger; soon, she could hear the wheeze and groan of something huge in restless dreams. She wished for a sword, a crystal, even something else to wear besides a thin robe that, come to think of it, wasn’t even hers. 

“You don’t want to go that way.”

A man had appeared out of nowhere. He’d come, it seemed, out of the wall. He was short and dark and holding a torch.

“It is fortunate that you came while he was sleeping,” he said, gesturing behind him to where the walls of the labyrinth shook with the snoring of the creature. “It’ll be some time before he awakens and craves manflesh.”

“The Minotaur,” said Sarah, with dawning realisation, and then - “You’re Daedalus.”

“And you are Sarah Williams,” he said. “Well met.”

He tapped a certain pattern on the wall next to them, and it slid open noiselessly to reveal a slim passage, which he went through. Sarah put down the ball of thread and followed him.

They emerged in another corridor - or perhaps it was the same, just curved in on itself. “I’ve never run this labyrinth before,” said Sarah. “How did I come here? And how do you know me?”

“You didn’t run it,” Daedalus said. “But Jareth did, a long time ago. Barely made it too. He was always better at keeping labyrinths than running them, that one. Who do you think built his labyrinth for him?”

He chuckled at Sarah’s expression. “He didn’t steal me, if that’s what you’re wondering. Nor my child.” His face darkened. “No, I lost my son all on my own.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sarah. “Where - ” she corrected herself, “no, _when_ am I?”

“Good,” said Daedalus. “Think, my dear.”

“This isn’t the real labyrinth, is it?” Sarah ran a finger along the wall. No dust. “This is a dream. His dream?”

“Hm. I can see why he likes you.” Daedalus smiled. “I was wondering when you’d wander in. It was bound to happen sooner or later, the way he leaves the dreams lying around. You’d think he wanted somebody to stumble over them.”

Sarah leaned against the wall and let out an exasperated breath. “When it comes to working out what he wants - god, I’d have better luck with a labyrinth.”

“People think a good labyrinth is all about confusion,” said Daedalus conversationally. “There’s more to it than that. It’s about antithesis. Left and right. Up and down. Maiden and monster. Runner and keeper.”

“Sounds reductive.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And yet the best labyrinths don’t just run on antithesis, they transmute it.” 

“I don’t want to keep running forever,” said Sarah. “But I can’t begin to imagine the cost to me if I stopped.”

Daedalus looked at her kindly. “You people are always fixated on solutions. But the joy of a labyrinth, the real joy - is in the running.”

The sun was setting when she returned to the castle. He was sitting in the window of the topmost turret, clad in white and gold, watching the light sink below the horizon. He sensed her approach - she could see it in the tension of his shoulders - but did not turn, not until she said: “Jareth.”

She was holding out her contract. He watched silently as she ripped it in two, then two again, on and on until it fell from her fingers in shreds.

“I’m done with these compacts between us,” she said. “Let me go.”

“No,” he said. It was almost broken, the way he said it. “Don’t make me do that again, Sarah.”

She went to him, took the angles of his face between her hands, kissed him full and slow.

“Let me go,” she said against his lips. “And maybe then I’ll decide to stay.”

*

The mirrors showed different worlds. An ancient ruin. The grounds of a castle. A dark city.

“Or they would if we could agree on where to hang them,” said Sarah irritably.

Jareth gestured with his riding crop for two of the goblins carrying the mirrors to swap places. The rest shuffled and groaned, wobbling somewhat dangerously. “I prefer them in the order of your conquest, my love.”

“Yes, but then it’ll take forever to get to the newest ones.”

“Forever isn’t long at all,” said Jareth with the blitheness only a person who bends time can achieve.

“I think we should organise them by frequency of use. The Scorch shouldn’t be so close to the front, for instance - I don’t see us visiting often.”

“I fancy the Scorch for a new place of banishment. The Bog is getting tedious. Nobody quite takes it seriously any more.” 

Sarah sighed and mentally filed “banishment” under Conversations To Have Another Time. “How about alphabetical order? Or basically any way to sort them so we can find them easily?”

“You and I can find any labyrinth we want, Sarah.”

“We could,” said Sarah hotly, “when we didn’t have _this many_. Now it’s just confusing.”

Time was she could enrage Jareth with her stubbornness, but these days it mostly just amused him. “You used to do so well with confusion, precious thing.”

He had that glint in his eye that promised things that should not be done in front of other people, not that he cared very much about that. “Take five,” Sarah told the goblins hastily, before Jareth got carried away.

“Right you are, milady.”

“Thankee, milady.”

Chuck ran in amid the departing goblins, slightly out of breath. “It’s time, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, of course.” Sarah fielded Jareth by the elbow and dragged him after Chuck.

The other boys were in the throne room, gathered around a visibly nervous Thomas. “Remember to pace yourself,” Newt was saying. “Oh, and don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Of course you’re not, you crazy shank.”

“First labyrinth, Thomas,” said Sarah briskly as she approached. “Feel ready?”

“Er,” said Thomas. “As I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“Remember - the tombs are occupied by the high priestesses, and you have to avoid the high priestesses.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then sway them to your cause,” said Jareth dryly. “Or hasn’t Sarah covered that with you lot? She’s terribly good at suborning people.”

Sarah batted at him absent-mindedly. Jareth smirked, counted out three crystals and handed them to Thomas. “Use them wisely. Neither solve nor destroy. Say your right words.”

Thomas nodded tightly and tucked them into his pouch.

Jareth gestured to her. “Why don’t you do the honours, Sarah?”

She wasn’t queen, not by a long shot, and not if she had anything to say about it. She had not said the right words and he no longer asked her for them. But the labyrinths answered to her. Not as to a queen, but as to a champion.

She took the crystal from him and flung it through the air, felt something catch and open in the fabric of the world as the vortex opened up in the throne room.

“Go forth,” she said. “Run us a labyrinth.”

**Author's Note:**

> The labyrinths in this story, in order of appearance:
> 
> \- the labyrinth of London Below from Neverwhere, a novel by Neil Gaiman  
> \- Labyrinth, a [painting](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-udnaANmJICA/T0Cgys15XJI/AAAAAAAAAjA/tcTuZiIVMDQ/s640/Leonora+Carrington_he+labyrinth.jpg) by Leonora Carrington  
> \- Tránsito en Espiral, a [painting](http://remedios-varo.com/obras-remedios-varo/decada-1960/transito-en-espiral-1962) by Remedios Varo  
> \- the city of Zobeide, from Invisible Cities, a novel by Italo Calvino  
> \- the Overlook Hotel's maze from the film The Shining  
> \- the maze from the series The Maze Runner  
> \- the Morrigan's thumbprint from The Hounds Of The Morrigan, a novel by Pat O'Shea  
> \- the Triwizard Tournament maze from Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, a novel by J. K. Rowling  
> \- Alice's Curious Labyrinth in Paris Disneyland  
> \- the city in the film Dark City, which stars Jennifer Connelly as [a torch singer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgHqbJr3NFI)  
> \- the library in Jorge Luis Borges's short story The Library Of Babel (while Sarah does not solve this one, Jonathan Basile has created a virtual version of the library [here](https://libraryofbabel.info))  
> \- the labyrinth of Crete created by Daedalus to trap the Minotaur in Greek myth  
> \- the tombs in The Tombs Of Atuan, a novel from Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series


End file.
